Posts Written by Jessica

While I’ll always be a part of the Feministing family – you’ll see me at events and I’ll to continue to work with the site in an advisory capacity – I’ll no longer be blogging or contributing to Feministing’s day-to-day work.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been writing on the site much the last few months. This is largely due to the early arrival of my daughter – my and her health were both tenuous, and I needed to focus on getting us better. This time away from Feministing provided a lot of room to reflect, and – as sad as it makes me – it’s become clear that it’s time to move on.

This decision is partly logistical; I’m working on two new projects that require my full energy and attention. I’m in the process of writing a book on parenthood, Why Have Kids?, for HarperCollins – a fun but daunting undertaking my first year of being a mom! I’m also excited to announce that I’ll be writing a weekly column, Body Politics, at the iPad newspaper The Daily, which is launching today. (My columns will also be available online; I’ll tweet and post the urls as they’re published.) I’m thrilled to have these new opportunities and want to give them my all.

But the main reason I’m leaving – one that I’ve been thinking about for some time – is more complicated.

In a piece I wrote for The Nation this September, I argued that mainstream feminists’ continued erasure of young activists was paving the way for conservative appropriation of the movement:

Part of the reason Palin and her cohort are so successful at positioning themselves as the “new” women’s movement is because we fail to push forward and support new feminists of our own. This is not to say that younger women aren’t at the forefront of the movement—they certainly are. But their work is often made invisible by an older generation of feminists who prefer to believe young women are apathetic rather than admitting their movement is shifting into something they ...

In a piece I wrote for The Nation this September, I argued that mainstream feminists’ continued erasure of young activists was paving the way for conservative appropriation of the movement:

As you may already know, I had a baby – a daughter named Layla Sorella Valenti-Golis. That’s the good (nay, wonderful!) news. The bad news is that she was born way too early; I developed severe pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome and had to deliver Layla when I was 29 weeks pregnant.

I was hospitalized after a routine exam showed I had dangerously high blood pressure – Andrew and I assumed it was all an overreaction because I didn’t feel sick. Even though the doctors were telling us I wouldn’t leave the hospital until I gave birth and that I might need to deliver in days, we didn’t really buy it. We ...

As you may already know, I had a baby – a daughter named Layla Sorella Valenti-Golis. That’s the good (nay, wonderful!) news. The bad news is that she was born way too early; ...

The new Eminem/Rihanna music video, Love the Way You Lie, has been getting a lot of play lately. We posted the video and you weighed in, and now some of the Feministing crew takes apart the video and whether or not it’s a win for DV awareness… Check out our chat after the jump.

Listen to the latest RealityCast where Hollaback founder Emily May talks fighting street harassment, Amanda Marcotte reviews “12th and Delaware”, and a segment the intersection of immigrant rights and reproductive justice.

This new ad out of the UK asks users if they’d like to call 999 (their version of 911) when they hear a violent argument; depending on what the user picks, they’re brought to a different video ending. Thoughts?